Just in: Therm-a-Rest ProLite Plus

Today saw the arrival of a Therm-a-Rest Pro Lite Plus camping mat from Go Outdoors for test

I’ll be completely honest a couple of years ago I wasn’t all that impressed with Go outdoors, their range seemed to be aiming at the bargain basement end of things with a lack of higher end gear and their camping equipment was lacking a few essentials. But i’m more than happy to report the last 18 months has seen them stocking some absolutely fantastic gear, with a great mix of budget gear and top end gear from the likes of Rab, North Face and Montane. All at great prices and in a good range of colours and sizes.

One of the things my local store seems to stock a good range of is camping mats everything from foam roll mats that cost a couple of quid all the way up to the latest lightweight offerings.

As it happend I had been looking at a new mat to replace the cheap one that was a bit heavy, bulky and on its last legs and my other half has nicked my old Alpkit one which is still going strong after a few years use.

The Therm-a-Rest ProLite Plus has an RRP of £95 so as I opened the packaging I was expecting great things. The mat certainly felt quite light and the material felt nice and strong and a lot less slippy than the old stormlite one.

The mat comes with a stuff sack and instruction manual come accessories catalogue, I was a little dissapointed that it didn’t contain a repair kit and that it was an optional extra, as for nearly £100 it’s the sort of thing I would have expected to be included.

According to Therm-a-Rest the ProLite Plus is great for colder nights and year round use and has a quoted insulation value of 3.8 which for a mat that weighs 680g (without the stuff sack) that’s pretty high.

Rolled up the mat seemes quite compact and inflated it seemed a lot thicker than most of the trail mats I’ve seemed in the shops, so should give me a nice comfy night.

So that’s it for now, I’m planning a camping trip to try it out very soon so watch this space for full review, in the meantime if you fancy buying one then Go Outdoors are selling them for £84 here or click the images below to enlarge.